there's our catastrophe

May 11

Child still detained after father died on Christmas Island

This couldn’t happen in Australia, could it?

You’re 9 years old. Your dad’s just died from a heart attack on the 1st day you were both taken to Christmas Island Detention Centre. No mum to comfort you. 10 days have passed & you’re still in detention.

This is happening right now.

Last night the 9 yr old boy was finally moved from Xmas Island after 10 days only to be put in detention in Perth. Despite 2 uncles in Australia wanting to take him in.

Apr 21

Villawood detainee dies after falling from hospital window

forestfungus:

“A detainee from the Villawood Detention Centre has died after falling out of a hospital window in Sydney’s south-west.”

WTF!! Refugees need to stop being locked up in Australia! It’s totally criminal!

“falling”

he jumped, what is with this headline

Apr 15

MITA Hunger Strike supporters blog

ACTION: Tuesday 16 April @ 11am

RELEASE ALL REFUGEES HELD IN INDEFINITE DETENTION

RELEASE THE ASIO POLITICAL PRISONERS

The Minister for Immigration can release these people.

Meet at Brendan O’Connor’s electoral office:
13-15 Lake Street, Caroline Springs

27 refugees, all indefinitely detained because of ‘adverse’ ASIO assessments are on the 8^th day of a hunger strike at the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation (MITA) in Broadmeadows. 56 refugees plus children detained with their parents, have been given refugee status but are imprisoned indefinitely on the basis of ‘adverse’ ASIO assessments.

A new review process is expected to take months and leave ASIO and the Immigration Minister with the final say. New statements of reasons given to refugees by ASIO are a joke, they are a few lines long, and provide no evidence for ASIO ‘beliefs’, or any reason why these refugees would be a threat if released. The refugees have already been held for periods of up to 4 years, and do not know whether they are ever going to be released. They are desperate for a resolution “Four years is more than enough, let us be free. Death is better than live hopelessness” reads one of their banners “We are very very innocent” reads another.

“There is no legislation that says refugees with ‘adverse’ ASIO assessments must be detained, this is a decision of the Immigration Minister Brendan O’Connor, who has the power to release all these refugees today” said Sue Bolton for the Refugee Advocacy Network

“The Refugee Advocacy Network calls for the immediate release of all refugees with ‘negative’ ASIO assessments.”

For more information ring Sue Bolton on 0413 377 978 or Pamela Curr 0417 175 075

Apr 12

“

All 27 of the strikers in detention at Broadmeadows have been assessed as genuine refugees. That means that the Immigration Department acknowledges that they faced persecution in Sri Lanka. But they can’t be allowed into the community because they have received adverse assessments from ASIO.

What do these assessments say? The refugees don’t know. They are not permitted to see the accusations against them, nor can they appeal. Though they have been charged with no crime, they now face detention without end.

” “Australia’s Guantanamo isn’t offshore: it’s in Melbourne”, Jeff Sparrow

Refugee supporters have started an ongoing vigil at MITA detention centre in Broadmeadows

“ASIO rejected refugees have started a dry hunger strike (no water) they have been detained for 3 to 4 years. Nothing has happened since the high court found it unlawful to detain refugees on ASIO findings. They all have refugee status. Today my dear friend was taken to hospital and a lot of the others are showing signs of weakness and kidney failure. Please show your support. Come down for as long as you like. If your going to stay bring sleeping bag and tents and water, please bring candles, banners, instruments etc. Our demands are clear. Immediate release of all ASIO rejected refugees.”

I am going to try and make it to MITA this weekend. Let me know if you wanna join. x x

Apr 10

Doctors urged to not force-feed detainees

Melbourne asylum seekers engaged in a hunger strike could have just days to live, Australian Medical Association president Steve Hambleton said on Tuesday.

The 28 refugees - given negative security assessments by ASIO - have vowed to refuse food and water until their demands for freedom are met. They began their hunger strike on Monday morning.

”Broadly, one can live without oxygen for four minutes, water for four days and food for four months,” Dr Hambleton said. ”Water’s actually an essential nutrient that very rapidly will render a person very, very unwell … with zero intake. You can become very sick very quickly. It sounds like it’s a silent, extreme desperation.”

Dr Hambleton’s comments came as the AMA announced it would recommend to its members they refuse to force-feed detainees engaged in hunger strikes, under new ethical guidelines.

The AMA’s new position binds doctors to respect the wishes of people who have made an informed and voluntary judgment to refuse food. It argues that under these circumstances, forced feeding of hunger strikers ”is not justifiable”.

Apr 8

RISE says:

Refugees at the MITA detention centre are declaring a hunger strike. Please read below message…

MESSAGE FROM THE ASIO REJECTED REFUGEES:

We are 30 people here at Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation (25 Tamils, 2 Burmese and 2 Iranian) and 56 people all over the Australian detention. We have been here for four years and more. We cannot tolerate it any longer. We need to be released to save our
lives.

At 2 a.m. today (Monday, April 8, 2013) we began a hunger strike together. All 30 of us plan to keep doing this until there is solution, one way or the other.

We will gather together in the grounds of the detention centre and stay there until we get a solution. If the Australian Government does not release us, we ask that they kill us mercifully.

We have painted banners as part of our protest. There is one that shows many people hanging. That is what we want to happen to us if we are not released. for life here.

People in here are jumping off rooves, they are going on hunger strikes, they are taking tablets, they are trying to hang themselves……It is a cruel and inhumane environment for everyone.

We plead with you, the Australian people, to help us. We are on the edge of life and don’t know how much longer we can stand it.

We ask Prime Minister Gillard, Immigration Minister O’Connor, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus Opposition leader Abbott and ASIO director David Irvine to stop this torture of all of us……. of
men, women and children, who have done nothing to warrant this cruel treatment that is destroying our minds.

We ask the authorities : You say we are a threat to this nation. So if we are such people why have they now put women and children and families in here with us? We are willing to be released into
the community under strict orders if they think we are threats, which we aren’t. But whatever they want we will do.

But we can’t keep living like this. We are not in detention. We are in a cemetery.

We don’t want to die. We left Sri Lanka, Burmese and Iran because we fear to die. We came to Australia to live, not die. But death would be better than the life we have.

SIGNED.
ALL ASIO REFUGEES-AUSTRALIA.

The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre comments: AUSTRALIA is the ONLY country which sees fit to lock up Tamil refugees as a security threat. UK , Europe and Canada have hundreds of thousands of Tamil people living and contributing to their communities.

Here are some of the banners they have painted to communicate with the Australian community as they sit on the Soccer pitch at the MITA in Broadmeadows on hunger strike.

there are actually quite a few countries that regularly reject Tamil asylum seekers (most recently, the UAE) but it’s certainly the case that Australia’s immigration detention regime is incredibly harsh; also that Tamil refugees face extra barriers to security clearance.

Apr 7

immigration detention is incredibly disgusting but I wish people would stop saying things like “asylum seekers are not criminals! don’t lock them up!” because like, you think everyone in prison got a fair trial? or a trial at all? a lot of people in prison are just waiting to be tried, often for months on end. a lot of people are in prison because they’re mentally ill, or physically sick, or homeless, and some clueless judge has decided they’re best off in jail, because prison reform has gone hand in hand with prison expansion and the end result is that prisons have absorbed a lot of the duties of the welfare state. you think people in prison got there purely through their own selfish choices? you think they’re not dealing with the effects of racism, colonialism, capitalism, war? it’s the same businesses running prisons and immigration detention faculties, the same governments granting contracts. seeking asylum is not a crime, it’s true. would it be better if it was? would that make you feel better about the state of justice in Australia? would it be better if asylum seekers were locked up indefinitely waiting for a trial? better than if they were locked up indefinitely waiting for an answer on an asylum claim?

anyway other people (e.g. cross border collective) have been saying this better, for longer, I’m not saying anything new, I’m just feeling particularly harrowed by the interconnection of everything terrible today